Posts by Kate
reading woolf
It’s been a melancholic week, even with the serious basement cleaning that D and I accomplished last weekend. (I’m still on my mission to de-clutter.) Stella started back to school on Monday, and she is thrilled to be a second-grader. Thrilled. She comes home full of stories about her day and her new classmates, and…
Read Moreclutter and clarity
I’m awake early these days, my to-do list making it impossible for me to sleep past a certain (still-dark) hour. So I get up, make some tea, and sit down at my desk, which is once again cluttered beyond recognition. Here I sit, thinking about the weekend (a couple of birthday parties, housework, back-to-school shopping)…
Read Morewhen there is hope, hope
(A heartbreaking, but take-action post.) A month ago, D and I found out that our good friend, John “Sly” Sylvester might have ALS (Lou Gerhig’s Disease). Earlier this summer, John and his wife, Tessie, spent two weeks at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester because over the last year John had lost mobility in his hand…
Read Morea blur
How can it almost be the middle of August already? Summers always go too fast, but this summer has been a blur. I drove up to St. Cloud yesterday to present to the Forum of Executive Women about writing, publishing and motherhood, and it was such a wonderful event. What an interesting and organized group…
Read Morea double life: discovering motherhood
I’m so pleased to have another author interview to post this week. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing Lisa Catherine Harper, whose debut memoir, A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood, won the 2010 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. This is a lovely, meditative memoir that takes the reader through Harper’s first pregnancy and early motherhood.…
Read Moremothers and daughters
If you’ve been reading my posts in the last few weeks, you know that as I sat next to my grandpa the week he was dying, I was reading Rae Meadows’ new novel Mothers and Daughters. It was the perfect novel to read as I said goodbye to Spencer because so much of the story for…
Read Morecelebrating spencer
Saturday we held the service for my grandpa, and it was lovely. There were tears, of course, but there was also lots of laughter as people stood up and shared their memories of my grandpa—his optimism, his integrity, his sense of humor, and his extraordinary golf swing. I read the piece I wrote last week…
Read Moreon being a writer
I haven’t had much time to sit down and really write these last weeks. Between my grandpa dying, a trip up north, a non-writing related freelance project, and limited childcare, I just haven’t had the time to spirit myself off to the coffee shop. And this bothers me. It makes me feel unmoored, as if…
Read Moretrees for faith's lodge
Faith’s Lodge, where I hold my annual writing retreat for mothers, was devastated in a storm that hit Western Wisconsin on July 1st. The lodge provides a place where parents and families facing the serious illness or death of a child can retreat to reflect on the past, renew strength for the present, and build…
Read Moreready
Thank you all so much for your thoughts and prayers over the last couple of weeks. I know all of you have experienced the deaths of loved ones, and I know many of these loved ones were too young to die. At 102, Spencer wasn’t too young. But as I sat by him in those…
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